The Blog Page for Northwest Arkansas Atheists

Morning Meditations #79: Platitudesville

I don’t know if the light went out or what. Untethered and unexpressed anger and rage are building up again. Every day has been the same for weeks. I wake up super sad or super angry, which is followed by trudging through those emotions to make sure Ivy gets off to school believing that her father is glad and not mad. Then the next couple hours to entire day are spent figuring out how to let it all go. I fail a bunch. Sometimes distractions save me, but of course, those aren’t a solutions, and distractions, even when beneficial, are by definition preventing me from discovering these daily doses of “let go.” Yet, when speaking about the prevention of things that I should be doing, all the time spent letting go of how much regret, disgust, and sadness I bring into every day is among the most time consuming and preventative things I do in a day.

I have been told as recently as new years eve eve that one could see the darkness in me. I struggled with it for a bit, but I agree that I radiate negativity even though I am usually one of the nicest, most supportive cats according to the observations of others.

What a paradox. And still, we all know two dozen of me. In fact, I’d say I am the most common man in America these days. Everyone realizes I have so much love and talent, but neither my love nor my talent are currently capable of doing anything other than trying, which is a great goal, but leads to nowhere if one can never accomplish anything with their efforts. How will those of us in this position teach our children how to seal a deal or achieve the most simple of goals if most of what we touch fails or just evaporates. I hope that it is instinctual to some degree. Now I know, it’s super easy for some thirty or forty something with a couple of jobs and joint custody to talk about success, but I’d love to see them take those platitudes to the broken homes and shattered souls of this world. Go find a starving family whose daughters are ravaged by both Islam and disease; go find them and tell them that being mindful and gratitude will enhance their lives. Go find the family in the deep south, spirits broken by religion that never pans out and institutional racism as deeply imbedded as the language. Go rattle off some more scripture and sing to them “don’t worry about a thing / cause every little thing / is gonna be alright.”

Maybe we can find some spiritualist to go take some yerba mate and sage to help cleanse their fucking chi and grease up their chakra holes.

Please, by the love of Jibberz Crabz, get over yourselves.

Not everything is going to be alright, and just being mindful and grateful will solve very little in your life. In fact there are a ton of things gone wrong that I’ll never have the chance to make “alright,” and the only thing solved in my life by the mindful and grateful thing, is, you know, being mindful and grateful.

Which can be useful tools for achieving a more enjoying life.

I’m sure it feels great for the Dali Lama to sit from an airplane during his next trip full of fame, telling everyone. I would talk about how my way of life is quite joyful from podiums, comfy chairs on campuses of higher education, while thousands hang on, every, word. Although, I have noticed that he doesn’t regularly take decades off to live among the people he coaches with such piety. Nope, universities and coffee shops all have much better Wi-Fi in Platitudesville.

I practice mindfulness meditations daily. Still, as lost as I’ve ever been. All these mother-fuckers who are living their dreams and chasing their goals from marriages and careers, I am happy for you, really, now shut the fuck up about it and act like you’ve been there before. Please stop telling me to be grateful for the fucking grass-hoppers and my daughter’s smiles; I am extremely pleased with both of those to the point of speechlessness. Neither of these things make me feel the least bit better when it comes to the state of my non-career and income; neither of those makes me feel a shred of pride for all the shit I have done to hurt myself, or my perseverance to overcome them.

“Hooray, you’ve stopped destroying yourself.”

Sure, awesome, great win, “I am happy I did that.”

I still fall apart when I turn around to look at the wake of destruction my “love” has wrought on myself and others. Furthermore, how dare you think that by putting good messages into the universe you are helping anyone. What you are doing is helping yourself, which is fine, as long as you’re honest about it. Put your gratitude post up, but be sure you let everyone know this is you wishing or showing off about all your good fortune, and many will rejoice with you. It is okay that you’re happy; you’re not a starving malaria child, but you are not necessarily making the world a better place by placing a “happiness is in the moment” meme or some ridiculously tedious and out of context piece of scripture on a social media feed. Plus, it is important to note, if nobody has yet informed you, that most of us aren’t buying your shit for a second, especially if that is all we ever see or hear from you: “Positive, positive, positive all the time, I am. Woo-hoo! I am so grateful, my grateful is grateful for my grateful. Man ‘o man. Happy, happy, joy, joy—“

I hope I’ve been honest with this series—with all of my blog series.

Please don’t be so hypocritical as to think you do these things selflessly. I am not trying to help anyone here. I could give a fuck who reads this, while at the same time endlessly grateful for every view. This is me showing off, as I am an entertainer, glad some of you are helped who do like it. I also like hearing about how it helps. So the result of me showing off is that I get joy sometimes—unapologetically selfish.

If you are helped as a result, I bet it is your fault, not mine. I will venture even further to say, I imagine that it is you helping yourself. And that too is a source of joy, for which I’m grateful. Now, take all that, remember that it is fleeting, and go take action to change something for those who have no source in which to generate nugatory platitude.